How Apparel Brand Mifland Achieved Scale and Profitability Without Taking the Conventional Wholesale Route

Small business takeaway: 

• Mifland’s growth underscores three adaptable lessons for startup consumer brands: owning the customer relationship can also mean owning the story—DTC distribution can protect pricing power and keep customer insights in-house; disciplined pacing—expanding production and merchandise assortment in measured steps—can protect profitability as demand rises; and strategic marketing initiatives, like targeted pop-ups and marquee collaborations, can boost brand equity and credibility. 

When Tobi Egberongbe launched his Mifland brand in 2011, it was the polar opposite of fast fashion. 

The Mifland label first appeared on hand-stitched leather bags that Egberongbe made himself, purchasing enough leather to make one bag at a time, cutting the leather, and sewing the pieces together—a process that initially took about two weeks from start to finish.

Now, Egberongbe heads a growing and profitable company that relies on multiple factories to produce its fashion line, which includes hundreds of apparel items as well as an array of leather bags and counts top athletes and Hollywood stars among its fans.

Throughout Mifland’s 15-year journey to become a multimillion-dollar brand, a lesson Egberongbe learned early on has guided him—slow and steady often is the best way to build a brand. 

During his first years selling the leather bags and before branching into apparel, Egberongbe learned the dangers of relying on wholesale orders. Instead of chasing wholesale orders from big retailers as the fastest way to scale, he focused on direct-to-consumer sales. He also used targeted pop-up shops and leveraged creative projects for high-profile companies like Adidas, Nike, and the Atlanta Falcons to boost brand awareness. 

Choosing to control his own destiny by selling direct-to-consumer: ‘I can control the narrative’

“I feel like you don’t get to control your own destiny” Egberongbe told CO—. “You can only grow as much as they’re allowing you to do so.”

Selling directly, he said, “I feel I can control this narrative,” rather than having customers’ impressions be influenced by a store employee or in-store experience.

Mifland’s growth story is especially relevant as the fashion industry grapples with the question of how to help new designers and brands thrive. 

Egberongbe started honing his playbook for growth more than a decade ago as a recent college grad. 

That blueprint included self-funding his business, using innovative ways to stand out, building a digital-first ecosystem, and forging relationships with key brand partners.

He deftly pivoted during the pandemic, expanded into apparel, and built a company that enjoys profitable growth of 10 to 15 percent a year. 

A slow and steady growth strategy: ‘From sunup to sundown, I was just making one bag at a time’ 

Mifland, headquartered in Atlanta, was born after Egberongbe saw a vintage leather bag he liked and figured out how to make one for himself. So many people asked him, “Where’s this bag from,” that he built a website and began selling it.

“I would never say it was my bag—I would just tell them the name of the website,” he said. 

A friend’s mother gave him a piece of savvy business advice. “She told me to put the name of the company right there on the bag—really big,” he said. 

“People can say ‘nice bag’ all day but only some people are courageous enough to ask the name, or where you got it from.

“So to this day, it’s right on the front,” he said—a strategy he later used with his apparel line.

A year after he began selling his bags, Japanese distributors who sold to specialty boutiques in Japan invited him to the country and helped him present the bag to retailers. He ended up with orders from 18 stores for roughly 250 bags with one caveat: that it would take him some time to produce them.

“I was very transparent about it. I would say these bags are handmade. There are no machines used to make these bags.

“And then from sunup to sundown, I was just making one bag at a time,” he said.

The next big break came in 2014, when Adidas asked to purchase 100 to 150 leather bags to give as Christmas gifts for the basketball players representing their brand. 

From 2014 to 2018, Egberongbe sold his bags, which had expanded to multiple styles and colors, in specialty stores and online. From 2018 to 2020, he focused more on collaborative projects for Nike and other brands, and on his own online channel. 

[Read more: 7 Winning Startups Share the (Adaptable) Secrets to Their Success]

A pandemic and a tough decision: ‘Do I create a new business or wait it out?’ A pivot into apparel pays off

When the pandemic hit in 2020, demand for the bags and other leather goods evaporated and Egberongbe went into apparel. 

“Everything I was making before the pandemic was a commuter good,” he said. “You have to be going somewhere to need a bag, or a passport cover—you need to leave home to use it.”

He was faced with a decision: “Do I essentially create a new tier of this business, or do I just wait this thing out?”

“I started out with things that people can wear at home or go to the grocery store—which were sweatsuit sets,” he said. “Excellent quality sweatsuit sets with our logo placements on it.” 

Egberongbe had worked as a professional photographer previously, and he was able to quickly create social media posts and website content that drove demand for his new apparel lines. 

He proceeded cautiously even though demand was strong immediately. 

“We started with something like a hundred sweatsuit sets and said OK, let’s see how fast these sell out. Then we would just restock and restock, but with each restock we would do 50% more,” he said.

Viral-selling hat leads to a 600-SKU apparel collection 

A reversible bucket hat became a viral hit during the pandemic, after Egberongbe asked friends to meet him in a park and created images showing a crowd of people all wearing the same playful hat.

The reversible hat was bright and colorful on one side and plain on the other— “depending on how you were feeling or how you wanted to feel,” he said.

He sold 500 hats the first weekend it was released, and over 5,000 within weeks.

The clothing line has expanded since the pandemic to include more than 600 SKUs (stock-keeping units) for shirts, cardigans, track jackets and pants, and other hat styles. All the items bear the Mifland logo, or the brand’s signature M, and all of the clothing is sold in unisex sizes.

Egberongbe said he decided to focus on what he knew—men’s clothing—although Mifland has seen that many of the items appeal to both sexes. When he designs, he said, he keeps that in mind and tries to “make universal clothes and consider it all art.”

The apparel line boosted Mifland’s sales by 340% during the pandemic, with continued double-digit growth post-pandemic. 

[Read more: Seizing the Secondhand Moment: 3 Companies Using Tech to Drive Growth With Their Resale and Tariff-Free Business Models]

Validation from superstar brands like Nike and Adidas: ‘Collaborations offer a lot of leverage points’ 

In 2024, Mifland collaborated with the Atlanta Falcons football team to create a six-piece collection of apparel in the team’s signature colors. Those items continue to be sold on the Falcons’ website and at the stadium.

Collaborations such as that, and previous ones with Adidas and Nike, played a key role in Mifland’s growth story, Egberongbe said.

“Collaborations definitely did offer a lot of leverage points,” he said, noting working with major brands such as Adidas, Nike, and the Falcons gave a new brand important validation.

Mifland has hosted eight sold-out pop-up shops in Atlanta and New York, which typically have crowds lining up to see his new releases.

Going forward, Egberongbe plans to continue the strategies that have brought the brand to where it is today, but he also is looking to expand internationally by building relationships with European and Asian specialty stores. 

Additionally, he is looking at wholesale differently now, from the view of a brand that has established itself, rather than a startup, and is exploring the idea of selling curated selections of items in a limited number of specialty stores in America.

Focus on your brand’s identity: ‘Drill into people’s minds, this is what we stand for’

But the slow and steady philosophy that built Mifland is still his guide. His advice to new fashion brands starting out is to “focus on what they want their evergreen to be—their core items.” 

Spend the first years creating your brand’s identity and building on it, he said. “Drill into people’s minds, ‘this is what we stand for.’” 

His dream was to create a brand that someone would instantly recognize. While designing his distinctive bags and vibrantly colored clothes, he would ask himself, “If I was sitting courtside and someone was sitting in the 300 section, could they identify my product?”

Now, he said, “I could be in the 300 section and see ‘Oh that’s a Mifland item in the front row.’” 

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